"A radical blueprint for universal housing meets an unflinching assessment of why we haven't won—from the bestselling author of Capital City
In the fight for housing, we are caught between the world we know and the world we want. A Right to Housing? offers both a roadmap and a reckoning. Drawing from his own experiences of on-the-ground organizing, Stein lays out practical policies for enacting a right to shelter, a right to a home, and a right to the city itself.
With unflinching honesty, he then explores why these visions continuously crash against the rocks of political reality. From the power of real estate capital to the inadequacy of our institutions, he reveals the forces blocking our path—and summons the complex feelings of a Left that has lost faith in the future.
Written in the heady weeks surrounding Zohran Mamdani's historic election for New York City mayor, Stein frames the book around the stirring possibilities and structural constraints of a socialist administration in the financial center of a sputtering empire. He opens a space for action in the absence of hope. This is an examination of life and politics at the intersection of optimism and pessimism, nihilism and naivety, faith and doubt—an essential book for activists, planners, and anyone who refuses to accept the housing crisis as inevitable or immutable."
"Our cities are changing. Around the world, more and more money is being invested in buildings and land. Real estate is now a $217 trillion-dollar industry, worth thirty-six times the value of all the gold ever mined. It forms sixty percent of global assets, and one of the most powerful people in the world—the president of the United States—made his name as a landlord and developer.
Samuel Stein shows that this explosive transformation of urban life and politics has been driven not only by the tastes of wealthy newcomers, but by the state-driven process of urban planning. Planning agencies provide a unique window into the ways the state uses and is used by capital, and the means by which urban renovations are translated into rising real estate values and rising rents.
Capital City explains the role of planners in the real estate state, as well as the remarkable power of planning to reclaim urban life."
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